Here’s how to pursue your passion.
First, choose the passion. If you don’t know what it is, then skip to the next step.
Second: go to school. If you had a passion, the teachers will most probably beat the crap out of you, intellectually, and convince you to become like everyone else, that is, lacking passion. If you were looking for some answers to your life choice questions, sorry, wrong place. They don’t teach that in school. But no worries, in both cases, it’s safer and cheaper to follow the advice of your parents and teachers and get “a real job that pays the bills because you can always pursue a hobby on weekends”.
OK, maybe you should wait till college? Maybe there, they’ll teach you how to find your true calling and make it a profession?
And so, college it is. Maybe you’re lucky and after a few years of dabbling in gender studies and medieval epistemology, you stumbled upon your true calling.
But, now that you’re into student debt, you need to make money with that “real job”. Passion can wait. After all, a whole life is ahead of you. You’ll look into that dharma issue at some vipassana retreat. After you get a promotion (have you seen the price tag for the “guru and food included” option?!)
Also, biology and societal pressure. You need to get married. And kids.
Suddenly, you need even more money to buy a house for your spouse’ mid-century modern furniture and upcoming kids.
Wait, actually, waay more money then you thought initially, when you both sit down to do the math. Because, family food, the mortgage, the second car, and your kids’ education, so they can start looking for and pursuing their own passions.
Finally, you earn the required amount of money, your student load and mortgage are paid off, the kids have left. You just need to find the time for your passion. Or that vipassana retreat.
And then… and then nothing.
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